English

GRB X-Ray Flare Properties among Different GRB Subclasses

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-10-16 v1

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be divided into three subclasses: X-ray flash (XRF), X-ray rich (XRR), and classical GRB (C-GRB). An X-ray flare is the rebrightening emission shown in the early X-ray afterglow of some GRBs. In this paper, we comprehensively examine the X-ray flare properties among XRF, XRR, and C-GRB subclasses. We utilize the XRF, XRR, and C-GRB subclass samples obtained from the Swift-BAT3 catalog, and the X-ray flare observational properties are collected from Falcone et al., Chincarini et al., and Yi et al. We find that XRFs and XRRs have more bright X-ray flares than C-GRBs. The ratio of the X-ray flare fluence to the prompt emission fluence has different distributions between XRF and C-GRB subclasses. The linear correlation between the duration and the peak time of the X-ray flares is also different between XRF and C-GRB subclasses. We are inclined to identify the GRBs with the bright X-ray flares as XRFs or XRRs. We discuss some issues that are related to the XRF/XRR/C-GRB classification. We also caution the selection effects and the instrument bias in our investigation. Large samples are required in the future to further confirm our results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.04512,
  title  = {GRB X-Ray Flare Properties among Different GRB Subclasses},
  author = {Chuanxi Liu and Jirong Mao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.04512},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

ApJ accepted

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:39:40.608Z